Peter Costa: Don’t trust anyone not on Facebook

Monday

Jun 29, 2009 at 12:01 AMJun 29, 2009 at 2:37 PM

In the 1960s, there was a popular saying among students: Don’t trust anyone over 30. With the recession denying more college graduates work and relegating them to spending hours on Facebook each day, I would revise the saying upward. Don’t trust anyone over 40 – presumably they will be working and fully co-opted by the system by then.

Peter Costa

In the 1960s, there was a popular saying among students: Don’t trust anyone over 30. With the recession denying more college graduates work and relegating them to spending hours on Facebook each day, I would revise the saying upward. Don’t trust anyone over 40 – presumably they will be working and fully co-opted by the system by then.

You read a lot about the gap between young and old people, and I wonder how wide that divide really is. Yes, we older folks wear shirts with collars and sensible shoes. And yes, we don’t text or Tweet as much (or at all) as the younger generations do, but the information explosion has fragged (as in grenade) our lives, too.

Even from our recliners, we can experience the proliferation of “news” about entertainers and celebrities – usually the domain of the young. We are ensnared by viral videos and flash pop-ups and see and hear gigabytes of youth-oriented information. But, the young would argue, older folks may experience some of the same information, but hey, don’t act on it. CBS anchorwoman Katie Couric has not gotten a tat on her neck. Matt Lauer has not gone Goth.

And yet, 19-year-old phenom country-pop singer Taylor Swift looks and acts remarkably ageless. But then there has been a blending and blurring of cultures. Boy bands, hip-hop, techno and rock contain elements of each other and that combined image is broadcast everywhere on every medium. You don’t have to go to Greenwich Village to hear some modern jazz, the way you had to in the 1960s. Progressive and modern jazz have their own channels on satellite radio.

There are fewer cultural enclaves, cabals and cliques. Radical has been forced to go mainstream. The Iranian uprising is on Twitter and YouTube. We are indeed a global village and the medium has become the message as Marshall McLuhan predicted in the early 1960s.

There is no hip culture growing unnoticed and unconcerned in the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco or Washington Square Park in the Village. If it’s now, we know about it now.

And the older folks are acting younger confusing things. You can see seniors diving into blue lagoons, hanging onto zip lines, reading their protest poetry at slams. Like the young, they simply refuse to act their age.

But, on the DL, the young still have their signs and signals that only young people know and observe. Nevertheless, age lines are erasing and the world of the instant, whether we like it or not, is making us all hipsters.

Peter Costa is a senior editor with GateHouse Media New England and is the author of a new book, “Outrageous CostaLiving: Still Laughing Through Life,” a collection of his recent humor columns available at amazon.com.